Since the announcement Friday that Paramount has entered a merger agreement to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, a lot has been written about the deal bringing together two major streaming platforms, HBO Max and Paramount+ (They will eventually become one, Paramount CEO David Ellison said today); two major film studios, Warner Bros. and Paramount; and two major TV studios, Warner Bros. Television and CBS Studios. The acquisition putting WBD‘s HBO and Paramount’s Showtime under the same corporate roof has gotten little or no attention.
That is because, under the previous Paramount regime, Showtime over the past several years became a dramatically scaled down version of its former self. Illustrating how differently the fortunes of the two pay TV networks have been trending, as WBD restored the “HBO” in streamer’s HBO Max’s name last May, Paramount a month later dropped “Showtime” from the name of its streamer’s highest subscription tier, which was rebranded from Paramount+ With Showtime to Paramount Premium.
One person who noticed the HBO-Showtime subplot in the Paramount-WBD merger is Robert Greenblatt, who has history at both networks.
“I will just say that it warms my heart to have Showtime and HBO owned by the same company after all these years,” he told Deadline. “There was a long run of them being good, healthy rivals, but at certain points the competition also became a little over the top.”
‘Six Feet Under’
Everett Collection
Greenblatt was executive producing HBO’s Alan Ball Emmy-nominated drama Six Feet Under when in 2003 he was recruited to become President of Entertainment for Showtime, a post he held for seven years before leaving to become NBC Entertainment chairman.
“When I first went to run Showtime in 2003, while I was still producing Six Feet Under at HBO, I was not held in the best regard by some of the people at HBO simply because of the competition,” Greenblatt said. “And then I built Showtime up over those subsequent years and gave HBO a little bit of run for its money — which was fun for all of us at Showtime as well as the whole industry.”
Long before Heated Rivalry became one of the most popular titles on HBO Max, it was a fitting description for HBO and Showtime’s dynamic in the premium original programming space which they owned until the arrival of Netflix.
For a decade, from the mid 2000s until the late 2010s under Greenblatt and his successor David Nevins, Showtime rose from humble beginnings to challenge HBO’s dominance as the two networks went head-to-head at the Emmys, duking it out in the Outstanding Drama Series field with such hits as The Sopranos and Game of Thrones (HBO) and Showtime’s Dexter and Homeland (HBO).
The two rivals’ trajectories eventually diverged.
“HBO continued to flourish, however, and has always been the gold standard of any kind of television programming, and it was my supreme pleasure to finally be there in 2019 overseeing it as well and rightfully putting the HBO name out in front of the new streamer we were creating,” Greenblatt said, referring to his March 2019 appointment as chairman of AT&T-owned WarnerMedia Entertainment, overseeing HBO and the May 2020 launch of HBO Max. “I’ve felt all along that brand is second to none.”
The value of the HBO brand was a major draw for buyers interested in WBD, with its future one of the first questions on everyone’s mind once the Paramount acquisition was confirmed.
Ellison was quick to squash any speculation today by stating that “HBO should stay HBO” and praising Casey Bloys, Chairman and CEO of HBO and HBO Max Content.
“Casey and his team are doing an absolutely remarkable job at HBO and we do plan for that to be able to operate with independence, so that HBO can candidly do what it does incredibly well,” he said.
HBO’s current roster of popular and acclaimed series includes GoT prequels House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, The White Lotus and The Last of Us as well as The Gilded Age.
Morgan Spector and Carrie Coon in ‘The Gilded Age’ Season 3
HBO Max
Greenblatt has remained connected to HBO following his August 2020 ouster in a restructuring as an executive producer on Julian Fellowes’ hit period drama, which he had developed at Showtime and greenlighted at NBC before picking it up at HBO.
As for Showtime, its current scripted slate consists of the Dexter revival Resurrection, The Agency: Central Intelligence and the final seasons of The Chi and the Emmy-nominated Yellowjackets.
While their content is largely consumed on streaming, HBO and Showtime also remain linear networks with lucrative carriage deals, delivered to millions of monthly subscribers.
Which means that, along with HBO and Showtime originals co-existing side by side on the future combined streaming platform, their linear versions could be bundled together by Paramount for leverage in carriage negotiations with cable, satellite providers and other MVPDs. That would be a somewhat poetic ending to the brands’ once bitter rivalry.
“I love the irony that the once-competitive David and Goliath are now living under the same roof,” Greenblatt said. “Even though Showtime is not quite what it once was. Long may HBO live as the world continues to consolidate!”
